The day you realized you were a programmer ...

Joost van Schaik

I remember three distinct events: me being in front of a window in the computer class in high school, too young to be allowed in. I watched the four Hazeltine 300 baud terminals there in awe fascination - REAL computers (did not know the difference then). This must be somewhere in the early 80's, and decided on the spot to become 'a computer man'. And I did go for it. The third event was when I was working as a junior programmer in the early 90's, about a year or so, as was heavily hacking on a complex UNIX script, while I suddenly stopped and thought: "Is this what I wanted?". And after a few seconds came "YESSS!" and I hacked further, till it worked. The third and most vividly remembered event was somewhat later: I had decided to take a hit on object oriented programming again. Had been playing around with Visual C++2.0 for a while and did not get it. Along came Java, and after three evenings of prodding it happened: sitting behind my private PC is a very small room, something 'clicked', and I suddenly saw this whole 'object thing' very cleary appearing in my mind, like a carpet that suddenly rolled out, a valley you can look in after a long climb to the top of the hill, or a faulty machine suddenly starting to run VERY smootly. I could juggle these objects in my mind, and see them working together. After that is was very hard to make non-OO programs again ;-). The love with Java did not last... after I got to see the very first .NET beta. But the love of the 'object thing' never died ;-)

mojp

It was when i was at high school in the 80's and didn't want a standard scientific calculator. I wanted one i could program. Found one with BASIC.

pg az

patrick.stasko wrote:

I saw the objects within my C# app coming together in a visio flow chart in my mind

I wish MY mind worked like that. Every now and then I will look on you-tube to see if they have any new stuff on "Born on a Blue Day" Daniel Tammet. He seems personable enough, I always wonder why he doesn't just make a killing as a software professional, with that kind of visualization/memory. If he can learn Icelandic in a week, what about some programming system, hmm. As of today his blog is trying to sell postcards of his Pi-painting, sigh.

pg--az

mojp

Actually even before that, In 1983, when other kids were playing marbles after school, i was in the computer room using the schools Apple 2E. I designed my own (very very simple) programming language and wrote an interpreter for it in BASIC.

BadKarma

1 sheep 10 sheeps 11 sheeps 100 sheeps 101 sheeps 110 ... ...

Learn from the mistakes of others, you may not live long enough to make them all yourself.

PaulPrice

BadKarma wrote:

1 sheep 10 sheeps 11 sheeps 100 sheeps 101 sheeps 110 ...

superb

Paul

Brady Kelly

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:

If you have ever taken a sleeping pill to get some sleep for a 7 AM meeting and then got a midnight call for an all nighter that now requires a caffeine pill.

:laugh:

Unscrambling Eggs: Decompiling ASP.NET

I Record

I remember my dad bringing home an IBM PS2 machine that he'd "borrowed" from work when I was about 6. I wrote a batch file options menu for my games, so I didn't have to 'cd' to the appropriate directory. When I was 15, my now brother-in-law showed me Turbo Pascal that he was learning at college, I then wrote a pong game before I started college (the same course as him). Through my 4 years of college I was always showing everyone else how to make the boring program we had to write more interesting, generally through boredom of completing it within a few mins. I thought I was a programmer, then I went work for a company using AS400s and RPG3/ILE, I realised how little I knew. I now write internal web applications for a school in .NET, all alone.

You don't have to be mad to live here [UK], but it helps.

Rich Leyshon

John M. Drescher wrote:

2k RAM vic20.

You do it a dis-service - there was a huge 3,583 bytes free at power-up! I only ever got the 3k expansion pack though. Best thing I ever did with a Vic 20 - me and a mate made a box of tricks that linked the Vic's parallel port via triacs (and a huge heatsink!) to ontrol some stage lighting (got up to 8kW) via the use of an assembly program that interpreted a "language" of lighting instructions to control eight channels of lights. It gets worse. When I got the C64 I did a new version that allowed up to 256 channels and full dimming control along with some faders that could have any channel (or group of channels) assigned to them for a bit of manual control. Alas, this one only ever reached demonstration stage with 2 or 3 working channels and one fader! But it did work! Rich

destynova · Citizen 20.1.01

That was how I realised I'd caught the programming bug as well - wherever I was going, I'd bring a notepad for writing ideas and snippets of code for first C64 Basic, then GFA Basic for the Atari ST (which made C64 Basic look like a cruel joke). Of course, for the first while, what I wrote was complete nonsense :)

Karl Sanford

I new when I was in 8th grade (11 years ago). We were learning quadratic equations and I hated it, so I learned how to program my TI-83 calculator to do it for me. Then the teacher got wise and realised what I was doing, so he started marking me down for not showing my work. I replied by going back and changing the program to show me the line by line work as well. I've been addicted ever since.

"It's like the sixties, but with less hope."

Dan Neely

... 8 sheep 9 sheep A sheep B sheep C sheep D sheep E sheep F sheep ... oh god I'm channeling a kiwi!

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

Dan Neely

Karl Sanford wrote:

he started marking me down for not showing my work.

MY defense to accusations that I was cheating by not showing work was to do one of the problems for the teacher without showing any work while spectated. None of them were ever able to prove I was copying answers out of the back of the book. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall

Stuart Rubin

This may not have been the "first" time, but it hit home pretty hard. When Sudoku puzzles first became popular a few years ago, my father thought I would like them and challenges me to do a "difficult" one (something like 4 out of 5 points of difficulty). Withing a few minutes, I had worked out a simple algorithm, complete with annotations in the boxes and margins, and solved the puzzle just like a computer would, systematically working through the grid eliminating options, until the puzzle was solved. It was not fun, but effective. Even as a human, I knew that the "brute force" solution was the way to go. Unfortunately, I was both the programmer AND the computer! BTW, that was the last sudoku I have ever done!

Richard Jones

When I was 16. Entering ASM as hex code on the 6502, and debugging it at the same time.

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

Steve Naidamast

I can't recall mine either... It was close to 35 years ago. I think I was just absorbed by the "Dark Side"...

Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com

FanatiX

This happened when I was on holidays in spain and found me coding the whole day instead of going to the beach... ...and every night when hundreds of lines of code are running through my brain... ...and everytime I look through the screen or elsewehere like a zombie, just thinking of the next piece of code to write... But i feel fine ;)

cpkilekofp

destynova wrote:

That was how I realised I'd caught the programming bug as well - wherever I was going, I'd bring a notepad for writing ideas and snippets of code for first C64 Basic, then GFA Basic for the Atari ST (which made C64 Basic look like a cruel joke). Of course, for the first while, what I wrote was complete nonsense

LOL...My first wife quickly got used to me suddenly staring off into space then grabbing a napkin and asking for a writing implement if an idea came to me while we were out to dinner...my boss would be amused when he saw that crumpled napkin sitting on my desk, 'cause he'd seen me do it at lunch...I'd just tell 'em "when creativity happens, you gotta write it down."

cpkilekofp

Steve Naidamast wrote:

I can't recall mine either... It was close to 35 years ago. I think I was just absorbed by the "Dark Side"...

For me, it was in 1974, when that cursed teletype printed out the results from my first successful bubble sort (described for me without code example). GE's "Apple" time-sharing system running Dartmouth Basic. Then I had a hiatus during which I had no access to a computer. I didn't get my first programming job until 1985, then my first permanent programming job came in 1988.

CDMTJX

Way back in college in my first programming class for FORTRAN. The teacher wasn't exactly giving intro material. I ended up going to the library to figure out functions and subprograms. I was the only one who handed in the last assignment on time. Teacher held my listing (olden days) up and waved it around for the class. In spite of a lousy teacher and lousy text book, I still figured out how to do the assignment...